Monthly Archives: March 2012

If you are a Gazan, you must immediately know what I am talking about.

In Gaza:

The first question when you call someone: “is there electricity?”

When you meet someone for the first time: instead of asking how do you do, you ask, “How is your electricity?”

When you are in a gathering meeting with friends or relatives, you never speak about weather, but about electricity!

When your Dad comes back from work, the first question he utters, “when did electricity go off?”

And the first question you may ask someone you intend to visit at 6 pm for instance, instead of “are you free?”, “do you have electricity at 6 pm?”

The first most common and accepted excuse for not doing your assignments, “there was no electricity”

In Gaza, the best gift you may present to someone is definitely ( a rechargeable light)!

In Gaza, it’s not awkward to hear the voice of your neighbour’s vacuum cleaner at 2 am. it’s not awkward to notice people sleep when electricity goes off, and wake up once it goes on, regardless of what time it is.

In Gaza, it’s normal to find clocks empty from numbers except for those which indicate electricity. For me, the watch contains only 4, 6 , and 10 !

[Feelings]:

Gazans are lucky that they feel the grace of electricity as nobody anywhere else does!

Happiness: when electricity suddenly goes on.

Sad waiting: when it’s about to go off

Astonishment: when it’s on, but it’s not its time to be so.

Family warmth: when it’s off in the evening.

Anger: when it goes on once you sleep, and off once you get up!

Rage: when you have loads of housework and assignments, and you cannot do anything but waiting!

Relaxation: when you are not in the mood to do any thing and it goes off offering you the best excuse ever!

[Darkness]:

You can find irony in almost everything here. However, once it gets dark, everyone starts thinking seriously. Fathers ask how many candles left. Children know they have to go to bed earlier than normal days. In darkness, all faces are the same, all minutes are the same, all places are the same, and all colors are only one.

My home is close to my university. I can walk to it every day and even enjoy wandering in the morning hours. I can easily find a taxi in my way back as the distance is somehow short, and my Shekel will be a nice chance for the driver.

Just today, I went back with my friend after having an exam finished at 4 pm. We stopped at the crossroad waiting for a taxi for her. We had to wait for about 30 minutes until she found one.

Well, this was the first time I feel the difficulty they suffer everyday’s morning and afternoon. My friend and I were looking at the coming taxis with hopeful eyes, the hope of which was chipping after the taxi passes leaving us with more than other 20 boys and girls before the pavement trying to fix our hope again.

30 minutes were enough to teach me a lot of things…

Just when we feel we are all the same, we can do what we have never done. Gaza people, those stubborn minds, were sitting in the taxis in fours in the back seat, and twos in the front one. at first, they were complaining, but once they go into the taxi, they forget about the crowded car, praising God they were lucky to find one!

My friend, who studies and woks as a special teacher at the same time, found herself forced to pay the taxi fare doubled, as she wanted to wait no more!

I looked at these long lines of people; they go into waiting same experience twice a day. I thought of students who may miss their exams waiting for a taxi, teachers who are thinking of their classes they’ll be late for, mothers who are thinking of their kids they have to bring from their kindergarten before it closes its doors, men who are thinking of their work and their tough managers who may deduct from their salary for being late, and even the taxi drivers who are thinking of those long queues of people on both sides of the road and the best way they may find to keep the fuel they hardly got as long as possible!

30 minutes of waiting…

I thought about Gaza, where everything becomes a subject of writing, even things supposed to pass very fast! Gaza, where you can ponder in quickness, you can write with your tears, where you may smile despite of everything, where you miss clean air which is not suffocating with power engines smoke, where you find a matter of irony in every minute detail, but still where you CANNOT SEE IN DARKNESS !